Good. Even though the product is made in China, there is still a large profit margin that will stream some money the other way, reducing the USA's trade deficit a bit. Essentially any money coming OUT of China is a good thing at this point.

Good. Even though the product is made in China, there is still a large profit margin that will stream some money the other way, reducing the USA's trade deficit a bit. Essentially any money coming OUT of China is a good thing at this point.

Yeah, the CEOs and Wall Street pukes really need the money!

Gotta go, my 401K is in the toilet and I have to get to the store and unload a truck. It's a good thing I went to college and got that MBA because they'd have me cleaning bathrooms without it!

*Any money flowing back in to the US hasn't and won't do you or me any good. It just enriches the top 1%. We are spiraling down and if you're doing well, enjoy it while you can.

Cannibalizing the assets of the corporation they are supposed to be in charge of? Thats pretty much it, Republicans have fought tooth and nail to make sure that CEOs are not at all responsible to the shareholders they are ostensibly serving. As a result CEOs have pretty much been given the go ahead to gorge themselves on as much of the company's stored wealth as they can, and if it gets to the point of collapse, they can liquidate whatever productive assets there may be and give it to themselves.

my 401k is chock full of shares of stock in the companies you are hating on. they do well, I do well. because I own part of them.

what the hell is your 401k full of? Raisins and modeling clay?

Also, the "top 1%" isn't a club that's impossible to get in to. hard? sure. impossible? nope. how did Bill Gates get in? How did the waltons get in? How did Paul McCartney and Oprah get in? Find a nitch, fill it, manage your money well, make sound decisions, and you can get in.

Man, you sure bought into American Myth. Dream on. You will never be rich - ever. McCartney (British), Oprah, Gates, Zuckerburg - you name it - were extremely lucky: either lucky to have been born with the talent; lucky for being at the right and time place; or all the above. You can work until you're blue in the face and balls and you will never ever get to where they are. I know this. We're told to work hard, get an education, take some risks and you will become rich - it's a GIVEN! Bullshit. Utter bullsh

We're told to work hard, get an education, take some risks and you will become rich - it's a GIVEN!

That's a flat-out lie. Either someone lied to you and you were unusually gullible, or you're lying now. I believe the latter.

No one's ever said anything like that to me, or to anyone that I know of. You and I almost certainly won't get rich, but you create your own opportunities. Work creating value and you can do all right. The world doesn't owe you anything.

Btw, tell you "it's impossible" story to my mother-in-law who grew up in a tiny little house, the daughter of a car salesman, and now owns several businesses, multiple houses, many acres of land (the parcel which the main branch of her businesses sitting upon last appraised for ~ $3 million, SANS the business on it), gets paid many thousands to give seminars at national conventions, plays around in the stock market as she likes, and travels abroad when she desires.

Bill Gates was from a very well-off and (even more importantly) well-connected upper middle class background. His father was the president of a national bank, and his mother was a businesswoman who served on the board of the United Way charity along with... the CEO of IBM.

Now, I'm not claiming that Gates' success was solely due to this, but you can bet it clearly gave him a major advantage and opened some doors that might never be opened to the majority of Americans. His background was far more privileged

Also, the "top 1%" isn't a club that's impossible to get in to. hard? sure. impossible? nope.

I'd say it's closer to impossible, and I don't know what that has to do with GP's point. We shouldn't try to change the current situation where the top 1% takes all because there's a slightly greater than zero percent chance we could make it into that 1%? That seems to be the only semi-logical reason people are opposed to any talk of wealth redistribution for the uber-wealthy. I guess if you think you have a shot at that, it's valid.

I'd say it's closer to impossible, and I don't know what that has to do with GP's point. We shouldn't try to change the current situation where the top 1% takes all because there's a slightly greater than zero percent chance we could make it into that 1%? That seems to be the only semi-logical reason people are opposed to any talk of wealth redistribution for the uber-wealthy. I guess if you think you have a shot at that, it's valid.

no it seems to me that the GP is engaging in sky-is-falling-we're-all-screwed delusions just like every generation has engaged in. Only one of them was right, the one in the 30s, and what happened? the economy re-emerged to become one of the strongest in the world. It's popular to say nowadays "oh no the next great depression is coming", because people like to worry and complain. Doesn't make it true, or even truly likely. It sells papers and gets web hits, that's it. doesn't make it any more true than the

odd, I was replying directly to your own assertion that we should be looking at wealth re-distribution, or is that not what your quote below means:

That seems to be the only semi-logical reason people are opposed to any talk of wealth redistribution for the uber-wealthy.

Sure sounds like you're promoting the idea. Me, I provided the only logical thought process by which I believe people can justify wealth re-distribution, that is the "I think that we should take their money from them because I personally do not think they should have it." i.e. "because, fuck them."

Sure sounds like you're promoting the idea. Me, I provided the only logical thought process by which I believe people can justify wealth re-distribution, that is the "I think that we should take their money from them because I personally do not think they should have it." i.e. "because, fuck them." I then questioned the morality of that assertion.

Well, that would be the strawman argument right there: I never made that assertion. Others may have, that's true. I'm in favor of wealth redistribution because I feel it's better for a stable society and is more moral. You can attack people who make statements in favor of wealth redistribution who do say "Because fuck rich people," you could even go so far as to say that MOST of the people who are arguing for wealth redistribution just hate rich people. Maybe it's the ONLY argument in favor of wealth re

This is only hypocrisy if one confuses saying "Taxes should be higher" with "The government is better at investing money in society than anyone else." I'm sure his first preference would be that the wealthy give most of their money to effective charities. Realizing that they obviously won't do that of their own volition, his second preference is that the government tax the wealthy more. In the mean time, he feels he can give money to charity, spending it bette

Also, the "top 1%" isn't a club that's impossible to get in to. hard? sure. impossible? nope. how did Bill Gates get in?

Use his daddy's money to buy QDOS and license it to IBM?

Your 401k would be full of raisins and modeling clay too if you weren't making enough extra to invest, which lots of people aren't...meanwhile, the 'greatest generation' is enjoying prop 13 housing, social security and generous pension benefits. Rock on sir.

Also, the "top 1%" isn't a club that's impossible to get in to. hard? sure. impossible? nope. how did Bill Gates get in?

Use his daddy's money to buy QDOS and license it to IBM?

How does that invalidate my point exactly? sounds to me like a smart business decision, filling a niche.

Your 401k would be full of raisins and modeling clay too if you weren't making enough extra to invest, which lots of people aren't...meanwhile, the 'greatest generation' is enjoying prop 13 housing, social security and generous pension benefits. Rock on sir.

spoken like a defeatist. assuming you have a job, you can easily drop something like 5% of your pre-tax income into a retirement fund almost no matter what you make. if you think you can't, the answer is that you won't. you won't give up the beer. you won't give up the cable tv. you won't give up the premium tier internet connection. you won't give up the big gas guzzling pickup. you won't give up eating

How does that invalidate my point exactly? sounds to me like a smart business decision, filling a niche.

It invalidates your point in that your dad won't give you 100K in 1975 dollars to speculate with? This may be because he doesn't own a highly profitable law firm or it may be that he thinks you should finish your degree at Harvard first, I'm not sure. You should ask him.

For myself, I put away money into funds/stocks every year. That does not mean I'll ever be able to retire, it just means I'll be able

Also, the "top 1%" isn't a club that's impossible to get in to. hard? sure. impossible? nope. how did Bill Gates get in? How did the waltons get in? How did Paul McCartney and Oprah get in? Find a nitch, fill it, manage your money well, make sound decisions, and you can get in.

The market is tanking, not Apple specifically. I hate to point out the obvious, but you want to buy low and sell high, not the other way around. Just 'cause a stock is down doesn't mean you shouldn't buy it. Doesn't mean you should, either.

Pukes indeed. Everyone I know is celebrating this implosion fo the stock market. The rich bastards that have been robbing us working folks blind for decades are finally getting whats coming to them. People like us living paycheck to paycheck aren't being hurt by this. It's the greed rich bastards that are crying now, and you know what? I don't feel a BIT sorry for the assholes.

Are you somehow under the impression that you need a mustache, monocle and top hat in order to invest? Or perhaps you think Social Security will be enough to retire on? Good luck with that.

The Demolition Man inspired phone will issue citations to chinese citizens for violation of the verbal morality statute on the recognition of key phrases including "human rights," "free tibet," "taiwan had the right idea," and "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."

Just about everyone I saw in Shenzhen and Dongguan a couple months ago was rocking an iPhone 4. Fewer in Beijing but they were still plentiful. My unlocked iPhone 3G worked just fine in each of the six cities I visited, including data. The app store is a different subject, though.

If you want a internationally usable phone in China, just buy a standard WCDMA model from China Unicom and use it anywhere. If you insist on using China Mobile, just get a non-3G SIM and use GPRS to surf, hell, most people I know with an iPhone these days do just that, because Unicom signal is a little bit on the shitty side. If you buy a TDSCDMA phone in China and you are not firmly rooted in China then you are an idiot.

unlocked UMTS iPhones have been available in China for at least 18 months to 2 years. They run on the China Unicom UMTS network at 3G, or you can run them on the China Mobile network at 2.5G.
The discussion is whether the iPhone should run TD-SCDMA or perhaps LTE, the first of which China Mobile supports as its 3G standard now, the second being what they are going to.
As to the content of iPhones, they are assembled in China by HonHai (FoxConn), which has 1M employees all over China but the supply chain